


requiem for a dream

by hyunsparkles



Category: Eternally - TXT (Music Video), TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Eternally MV, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Minor Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun, TXT are trainees, Tho tbh idk if it's properly fantasy, Yeonjun POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyunsparkles/pseuds/hyunsparkles
Summary: There’s a thought whispering through the back of his brain, no matter how many times he tries to ignore it. A thought that gets worse with every dream he has, dreams of dragons and trains and bright lights and fire, fire, fire. The thought that he’s missing something, that he’s forgotten something crucial and intrinsic. The thought, painted bright red like a warning, that something is going to burn.Follows Yeonjun's perspective in the Eternally MV.
Kudos: 18





	requiem for a dream

_YEONJUN_

Even in dreams, Yeonjun is alone. 

It’s August. These days, sleep comes easily to him, the byproduct of months and months of late nights practicing under the tinny, flickering fluorescents of the basement practice room. He’s all too familiar with the feeling of exhaustion creeping slowly from his burning muscles, to his throat, his heart, feeling so tired he might just collapse right then and there. The moist, humid summer air makes it worse, compounding his tired muscles with a near-constant sheen of sweat.

He catches sleep in corners, legs curled up to his chest, head leaned back against the grimy mirror, headphones still blasting EDM. Sleep creeps up on him like a ghost, careful and quiet, weakening his limbs and clasping his heart. And when he sleeps, he dreams of burning. He dreams of burning and he tends to wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, looking around for danger when there is none. The other trainees, Soobin and Kai and the rest, are mostly too tired to notice, too caught up in the confines of their daily lives. 

At first, he attributes the dreams to a lack of sleep, the result of both an exhausted mind and a sweaty, humid summer, the kind that settles in your bones and steals away your appetite. But a strange feeling starts to grow in his stomach. It’s like he’s expecting someone. Or something, rather.

It’s August, the last strains of summer panting their way through weather hot enough to cook an egg on black pavement. It’s August, the end of summer break, when the younger trainees go back to school and the practice rooms start to feel crowded with parental expectations and exam stress. 

Yeonjun feels all too much like he’s standing on a precipice with an awful storm kicking up in the distance. Like his toes are at the edge of the cliffs, his weight off-balance, and it’s impossible not to know what happens next, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

So, it’s August, the summer of his third year as a trainee. Something about this summer feels strained, like a beast on a leash, that weird feeling coursing through Yeonjun’s veins and his tired, achy muscles. 

There’s a thought whispering through the back of his brain, no matter how many times he tries to ignore it. A thought that gets worse with every dream he has, dreams of dragons and trains and bright lights and fire, fire, fire. The thought that he’s missing something, that he’s forgotten something crucial and intrinsic. The thought, painted bright red like a warning, that something is going to burn.

“Someone needs to fix those goddamn lights,” Taehyun comments without looking up from his phone. He’s perched on a bench in the corner of the practice room, taking a break from dance practice to scroll through social media. 

Above them, the fluorescent ceiling lights flicker a little, like a whole bunch of them are about to go out. Compounded with the oppressive, low-level heat of the barely air-conditioned basement, it’s giving Yeonjun a bit of a headache. 

He finishes gulping down a long sip of water and turns back to Kai, a younger trainee who’s asked for his help cleaning a sequence in a dance routine the trainees are learning. The boy stands expectantly in front of him, a little out of breath. “How was that?” He asks. 

Yeonjun frowns. “You’re rushing on the seven and eight and it’s coming out choppy. Try to take your time.” He pauses, resting his hands lightly on his hips. “Go again.” He feels sweat begin to trickle slowly between his shoulder blades. He wipes at his forehead, eyes narrowed with a vague, unrelated frustration.

Kai nods and tries the sequence again. It’s much better this time. Kai’s always been good at taking feedback, even when he finds something really difficult (like now). On the dreaded last two counts, the rapid seven and eight, he makes better use of space, kicking out his leg much farther than before. He rolls his neck clockwise, then stumbles just as the sequence is completed. 

Yeonjun nods in approval. “That’s better.” He notices the dark circles around Kai’s eyes; he must be dead-tired. Kai rarely stumbles.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yeonjun catches Beomgyu moving low to the floor. He looks over, ready to be annoyed. 

In the center of the practice room, Beomgyu crouches low to the ground, pointing his phone at Soobin, who’s sleeping like the dead. The latter’s head lolls back against the grimy mirror, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He looks unguarded in the way only sleeping people can. 

Yeonjun’s heart trips. It’s so rare that he gets to look at Soobin like this. The other boy always seems to catch him looking, turning so quickly it’s like he has eyes in the back of his head. Mindful of Kai waiting for him, Yeonjun takes in Soobin’s long, fluttering eyelashes, his thin, bony wrists and the curve of his neck as it meets the white collar of his shirt. Something whispers in his gut.

Suddenly, Soobin shudders, awaking with a start. His expression flickers, somewhere between shock and fear, and he stares out at the practice room for a long moment. Then he seems to register his surroundings, and the wide eyes turn tired and vague. He looks at Beomgyu and visibly registers both the camera and Beomgyu’s curving smile, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to tell him off. 

He keeps looking around. Yeonjun keeps looking at him.

Of course, it’s then that he looks over at Yeonjun, when Yeonjun is looking squarely at him with who knows what kind of expression. When their eyes meet, Soobin’s gaze is guarded.

Yeonjun feels a flicker of worry, but he knows Kai’s waiting for him and so doesn’t ask. He turns around with a sigh. “Go again,” he says abruptly. “Remember not to rush.”

Kai starts the choreography again, his brow furrowed with concentration. The heat presses down on them like a blanket. A weak breeze floats in from the window, whispering across Yeonjun’s neck, but then cuts off; Soobin has closed the window. 

All of a sudden, there’s a flash of black; the lights have started flickering again, only madly, aggressively. It’s like someone’s taken hold of the switch and is flicking the lights on and off, on and off, the light and the dark melting into each other.

Light dark light dark light, like that, over and over and over.

Yeonjun looks over at Kai, who looks stricken in between flashes of blackness. “What’s going on?” 

Then, Yeonjun catches an image. There’s no other way to put it; one moment he’s looking at Kai and the next, well… there’s a boy with wings, but not pretty ones. They’re big and jagged with clawed tips, bony like a dragon’s.

Yeonjun thinks of his dream. Vaguely, he hears someone shout, either Taehyun or Beomgyu, but he barely registers it. There’s a feeling growing in his gut, something deeply unpleasant and hungry. It feels like a maw, slowly eating up his insides. 

His headache grows. He turns around, meaning to ask one of the boys to run upstairs and see if the power’s going out, but no one’s there.

He’s alone. The practice room has faded into an awful grey, a room with no end, a room with no ceilings, an endless sea of grey. He stands alone.

“Guys?” he calls out desperately. “Guys, where are you?” He pauses. “Soobin?”

All of a sudden, there’s a light. He flinches away, but when it doesn’t grow fainter, he turns back to look, eyes narrowed. He’s in a stadium. Or, rather, at the entrance to a stadium, the outside light bright enough to blind him. The maw grows in his belly, gnawing away at some feeling he hadn’t realized existed. He ignores it. 

He has this sinking, sinking feeling.

He has this dream, sometimes. In the dream, he stands alone in a stadium as it cracks and breaks, a storm raging around it. It’s like it’s been hit with some invisible, impossible force, one that can crumble concrete and break iron. 

In the dream, he stands alone. When he looks down, his hands are curved. He can’t stretch out his fingers. His head pounds like someone’s taken a sledgehammer to it. He makes his way through the wreckage, and slips. He looks down. 

When he looks up, everything is burning. 

When he looks up, up at the stadium, everything is burning. He must have fallen asleep, because this is exactly like his dream: the crumbling concrete, the broken iron bars and columns, that unpleasant feeling in his stomach. It’s larger, though, stronger. He feels like he’s on the edge of a precipice, and try as he might, he can’t avoid feeling like he knows how this story ends.

But he ignores it. “Soobin?” He calls out. The shout is snatched away by the void. It doesn’t echo back to him; it’s just silent. 

The wind of the storm grows stronger, picking up dust from the wreckage and blowing it into Yeonjun’s face. He feels his eyes begin to water, and he lifts up his arm in front of his face to protect them. He picks his way through the ruins, unsure of what he's looking for but unable to just stand there and wait for it.

By the time he makes it to the center of the wreckage, the feeling’s risen like a wave about to crash onto shore, catching in his throat and gnawing at his chest. It’s there, like a monster. Thunder rolls across the sky, rumbling in Yeonjun’s ears like a promise of rain, but it doesn’t come.

It’s then that he sees the boy. 

He has yellow-blonde hair, the ends fried from too many home bleach jobs, strikingly similar to Yeonjun’s. Yeonjun winces- blood is trickling into the boy’s eyes, across his face, down his neck. His face is shadowed by the concrete precipice floating dangerously above him. Yeonjun wants to shout, to try to wake him up, to save him from the disaster. He peers through the darkness.

He sees it. He’s wearing his face. The boy is wearing his face. That’s Yeonjun’s face, laying bloodied on that rock. That’s Yeonjun, lying strangely, mouth slightly ajar in a way that makes the real Yeonjun think he’s not going to wake up anytime soon.

He doesn’t understand anything. 

A stone skitters nearby, grating against concrete like someone’s kicked it. Yeonjun turns his head quickly, his heart beating fast. Is he about to meet whatever killed the… whatever killed him? The wind whips his hair across his face, spraying dust into his eyes.

And there, hidden by darkness, two eyes - one blue, one green - stare directly at him, wide and expectant.

Yeonjun feels like he’s falling. Everything goes black. 

When he opens his eyes, he's back in the practice room, Kai's wide, wide eyes staring back at him. He feels Soobin's gaze rather than sees it. His cheeks warm.

"What the hell was that?" Beomgyu chuckles nervously, one hand braced against the doorknob like he's about to run up the stairs. He looks... shaken.

Taehyun shrugs from his place on the bench. He doesn't look like he's moved an inch. "Probably a power outage."

"We should go over the choreo," Soobin says finally. "Everyone, gather up."

Yeonjun nods. They start the choreography a few minutes later. The vision - the vision? - the concrete and the iron fades in his mind, blurring around the edges like an old memory. By the end of the night, he thinks he's imagined it.

But the eyes?

They haunt him late into the night. When he dreams, the shaking of the subway rocking him to sleep, he dreams of blackness, of flickering lights and heterochromatic eyes, blinking into the light. And when he wakes, he recognizes the name of that sharp maw, eating up his insides in every dream of fire and dragons he's ever had:

Loneliness.

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this work as a series with each members' perspectives but I'm not sure yet lol


End file.
